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My family moved to Kentucky halfway through my junior year in high school, staying there until my graduation, which was quickly followed by my father's retirement from the Navy. Outside of this 18-month stretch of my life, I hadn't really spent a lot of time in the South. Technically, my father was briefly stationed in Florida when I was very young, and my mother's family is mostly from Arkansas, but I've got the virtues of a tried-and-true Yankee. As a result, I've always found the South to be quite mystifying: it's not so much a place as it is a "state of mind", personified by a relaxed way of life with hospitable inhabitants. I had every intention of visiting after we left, but I just never got around to finding the time.

Enter Dave.

Dave is one of my oldest friends - we met while working together at an ACE Hardware store in Illinois, but he was originally from Kentucky (and wound up moving there after he finished high school). After I had moved to Los Angeles, Dave followed suit and settled into Orange County, about an hour away. He was also a longtime hockey fan, so we would often watch games together on television or make the occasional trip to a game itself. After a few years, Dave moved to Mississippi to help run one of his family's grocery stores - he seized the opportunity for several reasons, most notably being his yearning for the Southern lifestyle.

From the moment he arrived, Dave suggested that I come visit so that he could show me this region that he loved so much. His grocery store had a connection to get free tickets for New Orleans Saints games, and Dave also had family members who were season ticket holders for LSU's football team, so we naturally tried to find a weekend in which we could see both teams play. When I began my Hockey Road Trip "quest", Dave suggested we expand our Louisiana football plan one step further, and work in a trip to see the nearest NHL team: the Dallas Stars.

Once the NHL announced their 2014-15 schedule, I found one particular weekend in October which allowed us the chance to see all three teams: we would watch LSU on Saturday, the Saints on Sunday, then drive to Dallas to see the Stars on Tuesday. But what to do on Monday? As luck would have it, the Dallas Cowboys were scheduled to play on Monday Night Football that exact night - it was too perfect! I talked it over with my traveling buddy Chad, and he decided to opt out of the first part of the trip: he'd been to New Orleans and had seen the Superdome six months earlier (for Wrestlemania), so he would instead fly directly to Dallas and meet us there.

Hotels in New Orleans are rather expensive, and I couldn't find any Airbnb options to my liking, so we opted for a hotel 15 miles west of downtown. Dave booked the Dallas hotel, which was one where he'd stayed in the past. The plans were set, and off we went...